Imanmajed
Heir Presumptive
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2012
- Messages
- 2,049
- City
- -------
- Country
- United Arab Emirates
Next week Pope Francis is going to visit UAE at the invitation of Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi.
The visit will be the first of its kind to the Arabian peninsula by the head of the Catholic Church. It is of huge international significance, not just to Catholics in the UAE but for the whole region. The mass due to be celebrated on February 5 at Zayed Sports City will be attended by 135,000 people, the largest-ever gathering of Christians in Arabia.
It is important to remember that Christianity is not new to the country. Its presence here, albeit intermittent, can be traced back more than 1,400 years, as shown by the 1993 discovery of a Christian monastery on the island of Sir Bani Yas in the west of the country.
The ruins of the pre-Islamic monastery appears to have been established in around 600AD by monks from a Christian denomination known as the Church of the East. With its heartland in modern-day Iraq, that church once had adherents not just in Arabia but throughout Central Asia, as far as China.
The visit will be the first of its kind to the Arabian peninsula by the head of the Catholic Church. It is of huge international significance, not just to Catholics in the UAE but for the whole region. The mass due to be celebrated on February 5 at Zayed Sports City will be attended by 135,000 people, the largest-ever gathering of Christians in Arabia.
It is important to remember that Christianity is not new to the country. Its presence here, albeit intermittent, can be traced back more than 1,400 years, as shown by the 1993 discovery of a Christian monastery on the island of Sir Bani Yas in the west of the country.
The ruins of the pre-Islamic monastery appears to have been established in around 600AD by monks from a Christian denomination known as the Church of the East. With its heartland in modern-day Iraq, that church once had adherents not just in Arabia but throughout Central Asia, as far as China.
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